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Quick Aspic Jelly

A gelatinous broth made from ham, vegetables, and seasonings, set into a jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Quick Aspic Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a pot, combine ham, onion, carrot, celery, parsley, bay leaf, mushrooms, and red pepper with cold water.

  2. Simmer for about 1 hour.

Finish and set

  1. Add salt, beef extract, Kitchen Bouquet, and softened gelatine; stir thoroughly.

  2. Strain the mixture through double cheesecloth.

  3. Mould the liquid in a shallow pan and let it set.

  4. Once set, cut into squares or diamonds for garnish.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Mushroom + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the strained liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly once it cools.
Beef extract
Adds concentrated savoury meaty flavour to the clear stock.
Lean raw ham
Contributes savoury, meaty flavour to the stock as it simmers.

The step that matters

Straining through double cheesecloth. Gelatine sets clear only if the liquid is free of fine particles. Straining through double cheesecloth removes sediment and cloudiness, giving a clear, glossy aspic.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, carrot, celery, parsley, mushroom, pepper, beef):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, carrot, celery, parsley, mushroom, pepper, beef. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More aspic recipes

Chicken 77Meat 26Tomato 25Jelly 16Lobster 14Beef 10 See all 167 →

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